Luke 8:1-3: Ministering Women – Part II
Thursday, September 28, 2023
Bernardino Luini:The Conversion of the Magdalene
A Favorite from September 6, 2008.
As the sparrow finds a home and the swallow a nest to settle her young, my home is by your altars, Lord of hosts, my king and my God. Psalm 84:4
From a MAGNIFICAT Meditation (September 22, 2007) by Father Maurice Zundel, a Swiss mystic, poet, philosopher, liturgist and author who writes about the present Messianic age, the age of Mary: The new vision of woman, that Mary inspires by her presence in our history, constitutes a vital opportunity to establish a truly free world . . . Woman, fashioned after this model, transcending the species and attracting man by the light of her inner life, might suggest a real answer to the condition of contemporary humanity. She can reveal to man the highest spheres of her own being by embodying the perpetual need to surpass himself.
Does the world of men feel this surpassing and so strive to control it? Does the world of women feel overwhelmed by this challenge and seek to become like men rather than bloom into full femininity?
Father Zundel continues: We cannot hope to find a human solution to all the problems facing us as long as we fail to recognize our capacity for the infinite, a capacity that unhinges us when it cannot be actualized in a field of expansion as vast as its potential.
We cannot expect to find unity among us if we step back from the challenge given us – this challenge of being infinite – of unifying in the divine corpus of Christ. If we fail to recognize the pitfall of concentrating on all that divides us, of focusing on our lack rather than on our potential, we cannot live up to this potential. If we believe that this expansion of which Father Zundel writes is impossible, we fail God. We lack faith in God’s ability to make all things happen. We fall into the darkness of doubt, of leaving-well-enough-alone, of despair, of anxiety.
We cannot become frightened of the challenges God gives us. Rather, we must be encouraged by the confidence he places in us. We must rise to the hope and the potential placed in us. For in this hope lies the rescue of the world. In this hope lies our true union with God – our infiniteness.
The potential that God places in each of us is what Jesus saw in the women and men who accompanied him to Jerusalem. The Hope of God was placed in us – men and women – at birth. The Spirit of God is nurtured in each of us as God’s children – female and male.
Tomorrow, Jerusalem, the cross and the grave.
The Noontimes 